Challenges with the crafting ecosystem

Crafting has often been an irrelevant system from a progression POV in many MMO:s. It has often also been boring. This is a shame since a great MMO need a great crafting system. A system where crafted items can rival random drops and quest rewards from around the game.

1
The first challenge for a healthy crafting ecosystem is to make people actually bother with it. For people to care, crafting needs to be relevant during all stages of the game. Random quest rewards and drops should not outclass almost all crafted items, weather it is during early, mid or endgame.

2
The second challenge is for crafters to have access to a steady flow of supplies that are price competitive. For this there needs to be a lot of supply and demand. The first point cowers demand but supply is a bit trickier. For people to bother with gathering and refining there needs to be enough incentive for people to pick these professions and actually spend time gathering and refining stuff during all stages of the game.

Good incentives could be unique quests that are designed for refiners/gatherers or competitive gold/xp rewards from farming the materials needed by the crafters. The first point makes gold farming by gathering competitive if it is done right.

Another interesting incentive is one IS has already denied but could use more thought. Gathering professions and refining could give small or fun buffs to players. For example, a woodcutter would become a lot stronger than a herbalist. This could mean that the woodcutter gets a small strength buff. These buffs would make every single player interested in picking at least one profession which is great for the health of the ecosystem.

Alternatively, some professions could give small fun abilities. For example, the ability for a herbalist to transform into a cactus or “The amount of times you had to squat down to pick up herbs has given you the ability to jump high once every 5 minutes”

3
One interesting thing is where gathered materials comes from. Instead of a dragon or monster randomly carrying equipment certain bosses could drop specific farming materials. For example, killing “Butter Dragon” could make him drop “Tooth of Butter Dragon” or be skinned for “Scale of Butter Dragon” which in turn could be used to craft great end-game gear by dedicated crafters. This would make many players seek out crafters to work with their gathered materials.

4
Crafting progression is also something that is half done in many games. There should be different rarities or quality to fishing rods, mining picks, skinning knives etc. For example, “Tooth of Butter Dragon” could be used to create a high quality skinning knife that in turn opens up new rare and exciting skinning possibilities.

There could also be some for of crafting guild or NPC-hub with reputation tied to it. Higher reputation would unlock new recipes, rewards and cosmetics.

5
But the most important factor by far is that many, many people decide to join in the ecosystem. We need tons of crafters, refiners and gatherers for the system to be fun and healthy. And the only way to get many players is to make it relevant and fun. Do not put this on second priority. It is vital for the game.

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Comments

Gimlog

I'm worry of the fact that Steven said lvl 50 could be reached in 45 days ...
It make me think that most of the early crafted stuff won't be buy because lvl would rise to quickly and only late lvl stuff will be worth to be bought.

Atama

Gimlog wrote: »

I'm worry of the fact that Steven said lvl 50 could be reached in 45 days ...
It make me think that most of the early crafted stuff won't be buy because lvl would rise to quickly and only late lvl stuff will be worth to be bought.

Is that 45 days playing casually, an hour or so a day? Or is that a marathon 45 days, 12 hours a day, 540 hours of playing total?

Saying how many “days” it can take to reach a goal is meaningless when discussing video games. Note that in game reviews people talk about “hours” rather than “days” of gameplay for that very reason.

unknown

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midgard

Muro wrote: »

Rather than just rub their hands together after having materials in the bags and instantly creating an item I want crafting to be a bit longer process for the character. I want there to be stages in making gear and on each stage you could do things a little bit differently than other players. I'd like crafting recipes to only give a basic advice on how to make a piece of equipment so people would have to do a lot of experimenting on their own to get the best results. Also crafting a legendary should have high risk so that players and guilds will seek out the top crafters to do them.
I'm also interested in your crafting guild.

yes the experiments will be fun for like 1 or 2 months and then we all just look up wikki to make the "best" one .
example :
its great if you can have studded leather whith iron or copper or silver or bone or watever other material you can find studs .
but once thy are all made and you check thyr stats you will have 1 come out as the "best" and all will make those .
baring of cource fashion choice becous the leather ( black panther skin ) armor whith bone studs just looks so cool .

olso please no minigames while crafting .
i do not want to lose most of my crafting supplies becous i am bad at DDR games .

Ventharien

Damokles wrote: »

I wonder how many resources a boss like the elder dragon actually produces. He is as tall as a small mountain after all xD

Exactly 2 Pinky Talons. hahah

Ventharien

I love it when games give the chance for you to become famed through crafting. It's pretty common for 3 or 4 names to be known in pvp circles, but being able to be known as a great blacksmith or jewelcrafter is awesome!

Atama

Ventharien wrote: »

I love it when games give the chance for you to become famed through crafting. It's pretty common for 3 or 4 names to be known in pvp circles, but being able to be known as a great blacksmith or jewelcrafter is awesome!

In Star Wars Galaxies we had certain crafters who were famous on their servers. They had High skills and got the best materials, and produced better gear than others. I remember on my server (Corbantis) there was a rifle maker so famous that people would show off the fact that they got one of his guns. He charged a premium and he only had so many guns at any given time so not everybody could have one. I’d love to see something like that in this game.

Noaani

Gimlog wrote: »

I'm worry of the fact that Steven said lvl 50 could be reached in 45 days ...
It make me think that most of the early crafted stuff won't be buy because lvl would rise to quickly and only late lvl stuff will be worth to be bought.

Most MMO's I've played, it took me less than a week to hit max level. I don't think I've ever played one where it took longer than 2 weeks (though I have not played every MMO).

If he is saying it is "possible" to hit level 50 in 45 days, that would suggest that most people will take twice that long, or even longer. This would make Ashes one of the slower leveling MMO's out there.

Undead Canuck

Well, they did mention that the leaderboards would include non-combat achievements. I would check that before going to someone and finding out they are flashy but not really skilled.

Gimlog

@Atama and @noaani you are both right, this 45 days are meaningless without Steven standards.

But what it make me generally think it's if leveling a crafter is slower than leveling a character , we will have to past time to lvl up our crafting skills without being able to sell anything because low lvl gears won't be attractive enough vs the time low and mid lvl players will gather the gold needed to buy it.

I had play a game where the economy what pretty decent and healthy but where 99% of early gears where useless because that 1% what enough to reached mid game and it was only the 50% last lvl where you had to really choose between different gears and participate at the economy.
On the crafter side to be economy viable he had to reach 60% of max lvl.

But all depends of IS choose , and feedback of the crafter community during beta.

Muro

midgard wrote: »

Muro wrote: »

Rather than just rub their hands together after having materials in the bags and instantly creating an item I want crafting to be a bit longer process for the character. I want there to be stages in making gear and on each stage you could do things a little bit differently than other players. I'd like crafting recipes to only give a basic advice on how to make a piece of equipment so people would have to do a lot of experimenting on their own to get the best results. Also crafting a legendary should have high risk so that players and guilds will seek out the top crafters to do them.
I'm also interested in your crafting guild.

yes the experiments will be fun for like 1 or 2 months and then we all just look up wikki to make the "best" one .
example :
its great if you can have studded leather whith iron or copper or silver or bone or watever other material you can find studs .
but once thy are all made and you check thyr stats you will have 1 come out as the "best" and all will make those .
baring of cource fashion choice becous the leather ( black panther skin ) armor whith bone studs just looks so cool .

olso please no minigames while crafting .
i do not want to lose most of my crafting supplies becous i am bad at DDR games .

After revisiting my old comment I have some new ideas. What if experimenting will stay relevant and there would be no wiki info on the "best" one. If keeping certain ways to craft a secret is incentivized for players by giving extra crafting experience based on if other players have used it before or maybe titles if you're the first to make x amount of gear with the method. Same with experimenting new ways to craft. If you discover a new method you gain more experience or a title or a progression towards a title like Master Craftsman or something. I feel like these ideas could work. What do you guys think?

Plateau

Thanks for making this thread, @Marzzo. I have been somewhat beside myself thinking about how simple and boring the gathering looked in the Alpha Preview. But I didn't want to make a post on it, because I know a lot of people like that extremely basic, "relaxing" type of gameplay, and of course things could change a lot during the alphas and betas. So I thought maybe I was getting worked up over nothing. It's nice to hear that a few people share my concerns.

To me, the main issue is that, from what we've seen/heard so far, Intrepid has no plans to improve upon the basic gathering/crafting gameplay we've seen in most other MMOs (clicking on things and waiting for bars to fill up, 100 times over). The only facet of crafting/gathering that they are innovating on is the overall economy: trying to make every part of the MMO depend on each other (gathering, crafting, gear progression, loot drops from mobs, node progression).

We have little quotes and tidbits for every other aspect of the game, and even for crafting we've heard some stuff about the progression of artisan classes and the ability to tweak different crafting recipes. But we've heard absolutely nothing about the core gameplay of crafting and gathering. What do these activities actually require us to do?

There are so many ways that these systems could be made more interesting (many good suggestions in this thread), but until we hear more about, I'm just assuming that it will be the same, old process:

Gathering = Look at map, go to gathering location, click on gathering node, wait for character to swing their gathering tool 3 times, repeat 50 times.
Crafting = Look at recipe, buy/gather materials, go to crafting station, (maybe choose some additional stats to tweak the result), press button to initiate craft, wait for bar to fill up.
For either activity, throw a little bit of RNG into the results for excitement, I guess.

So yeah, for all the monthly Q&A sessions, from now until we hear more about it, I'm gonna be pestering Intrepid about the gathering system. (I'm slightly more concerned about gathering than crafting, so I'll let someone else ask about crafting.)

BTW, my standard of evaluation is Minecraft. If AoC's gathering system is so boring that I'd prefer to go back to Minecraft and gather iron ore for the 20th time, then Intrepid has failed in this particular area.

Ferryman

I have few concerns related to economy:

The planned system is really restrictive where character can focus only on one or few things especially if you want to be a master gatherer, processor or crafter. So my personal expectations are not high and I predict overall quite monotonous system because of that. Those who like to deal with professions now and then the planned system can be okay I guess, but those who want to focus on different lifeskills will face a quite narrow content for their main activity.

How to make gathering, processing and crafting equally viable and profitable? On paper processing looks a great choise, you just buy already gathered resources, process those and sell the processed resouces for profit. Gathering is usually quite solid income and only downside is that it can be time consuming. Crafting can be in bad position, because it might turn to be hard to sell your stuff especially if you do not have much variations what to craft.

Noaani

leonerdo wrote: »

So yeah, for all the monthly Q&A sessions, from now until we hear more about it, I'm gonna be pestering Intrepid about the gathering system. (I'm slightly more concerned about gathering than crafting, so I'll let someone else ask about crafting.)

This is a solid idea.

---

My thoughts on the whole thing can be summed up fairly simply; if you don't like banging on rocks, don't bang on rocks.

Ashes is a game about community, about working together. This applies to all aspects of the game, not just combat.

In the same way it is easy to say "if you want a game where you cal solo the content, go play ***", the same can be applied to crafting in Ashes. If you want a game where you can do it all in terms of crafting, there are a plethora of other games out there that allow you to do exactly that - may be one of them is better suited to a player that considers being able to craft all the things to be the most important factor in an MMO to them.

Now, some people do love the mindless gameplay involved in just banging on rocks, and you know what? I think you and I should leave them to that. They enjoy it, we don't, that's cool - that is how a game that is based around everyone working together should be.

leonerdo wrote: »

Crafting = Look at recipe, buy/gather materials, go to crafting station, (maybe choose some additional stats to tweak the result), press button to initiate craft, wait for bar to fill up.

This is the part where I personally think you are underestimating things a little.

First of all, unless you are in an economic metropolis, the chances of you finding all the materials you need to craft an item are slim - almost non-existent. Even in an economic metropolis, if you find the materials up for sale, chances are you then have to go to the node they are being sold at to collect them. If these are raw materials, chances are, you will need to transport them back to your node via caravan (caravans are - essentially - as much a part of the crafting system as they are a part of the node, quest and PvP systems). It may even be that you are best served carrying intermediate materials via caravan as well, not just raw (a good question for you to ask in a Q&A perhaps).

On top of all of this, there are components that are only available via mob drop, and even specific to boss kills. You may even need to have these mob/boss dropped raw materials processed in to intermediary components by another crafting class - though that is speculation.

So really, that new sword you want to craft, the process of crafting it involves gathering raw materials from potentially a dozen or more nodes, protecting it via caravan (one from each origin node) to be processed in to intermediate components - which is a process that may itself involve materials from a dozen or more nodes, all transformed in to intermediary items. From there, those new intermediaries need to then be transported once again to the node where assembly of the final item will take place (which may or may not be the node where processing was done, but if buying on the open market, one can't automatically assume that will be the case).

Once in possession of the crafter that is to make that sword, it then needs to be combined with items procured in dungeons and/or raids (or potentially other intermediaries made by another class - speculation), and the stats of the final item then need to be decided on.

Now, if an individual wants to ignore all of that and only buy the components needed to do that last step, imo that is on the individual if they dislike the crafting process.

Now, I'd be all for a mini-game of sorts being added to crafting (as long as it is better than the mini-game EQ2 has - and it should be different for different item types). However, the full crafting system - if you consider that to be everything from the the procurement of raw materials up to crafting the finished item - is fairly complex and involves people that enjoy mindless harvesting, people that enjoy PvP, people that enjoy PvE, and people that enjoy different aspects of crafting itself.

To me, the people that are the most successful crafters in Ashes are going to be the people that set up the most robust network to get all of that done as efficiently as possible - success will be more about people management than anything else.

Essentially, it will be a real team effort.

Plateau

noaani wrote: »

However, the full crafting system - if you consider that to be everything from the the procurement of raw materials up to crafting the finished item - is fairly complex and involves people that enjoy mindless harvesting, people that enjoy PvP, people that enjoy PvE, and people that enjoy different aspects of crafting itself.

I mean you're right, and I don't want to make this a bigger deal than I've already made it. There's plenty of fun aspects of the game which are related to crafting and gathering. But to think that the actual crafting and gathering actions, the two parts of the game which actually require a leveled-up artisan class, will be so bland? It's kinda anti-climatic.

And yet I know some people who would still be proud of maxing out their artisan class, just because they spent so much time (and money) on it, and now they can make whatever they like. I just want to give those people a slightly more enjoyable experience as they grind their way up.

Noaani

leonerdo wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

However, the full crafting system - if you consider that to be everything from the the procurement of raw materials up to crafting the finished item - is fairly complex and involves people that enjoy mindless harvesting, people that enjoy PvP, people that enjoy PvE, and people that enjoy different aspects of crafting itself.

I mean you're right, and I don't want to make this a bigger deal than I've already made it. There's plenty of fun aspects of the game which are related to crafting and gathering. But to think that the actual crafting and gathering actions, the two parts of the game which actually require a leveled-up artisan class, will be so bland? It's kinda anti-climatic.

And yet I know some people who would still be proud of maxing out their artisan class, just because they spent so much time (and money) on it, and now they can make whatever they like. I just want to give those people a slightly more enjoyable experience as they grind their way up.

Do't get me wrong, I'm all for making crafting as interesting as possible (as I am with any aspect of a game). I was just saying that there is actually a lot more depth to getting an item made in Ashes than in any other game I've ever played (including Archeage, which itself is fairly deep.).

I am a bit of a fan of the idea of adding a mini-game to crafting, I personally think that is the only real way to make the actual crafting of an item anything other than mundane.

EQ2 did this, but I would rather have no mini-game than their implementation of it. In that game, all artisan classes had the same exceedingly simple mini-game for every item, and as players would have to make thousands of items to level up to max level, that game got very tiring very quickly.

On the other hand, I believe it was Allods Online (a game I only played very briefly, a long time ago) had a better system for this.

Different crafting classes had different mini-games associated with them. The only one I remember from that game was a slot machine type game for alchemy. Each ingredient would have different effects associated with it (not unlike Elder Scrolls games), but rather than having to match up items with like effects, the effects would be placed on the wheel of the "slot machine" mechanic. From memory, the wheel had 8 positions, and so each effect of an ingredient would take up a number of slots, so that the whole ingredient had all 8 slots filled. Thus an ingredient may have (for example, all random effects and numbers) 3 slots of healing, 4 slots of poison damage and one slot of invisibility.

You would spin the wheels, stopping each wheel one at a time, and the effect that you stopped it on was applied to the finished potion. Thus if you used the ingredient above, your potion could have a heal, an invis or a poison based on where you stopped the wheel.

As you gained levels in the crafting class, you would game bonuses to this game (being able to move any one wheel one position is an example that I think I remember).

To me, this is a way to make alchemy more interesting, and if a different mini-game could be created for each crafting class, I do think crafting as a whole would be far more interesting.

But all of that is not to distract from the fact that the crafting system as is - even it we end out having a standard actual mechanic - is actually quite involved.

Blink2

I feel that crafting in a lot of games can be improved with the requirement of some type of mini-game or something along those lines to separate a novice crafter from a master one. It takes a lot of work for a crafter to level their trade and acquire materials, but there has never really been a real sense of mechanical skill in crafting. A player in a game who has the best equipment and knows all their skills will do great, but unless they develop certain mechanical skills they won't be the best, whereas if you gave a novice player a top tier crafter's character they would be able to churn out the same quality equipment as them.

Ferryman

Mini games can be great but also problematic. At start those can be really interesting but easily become more like a burden. However, every new idea which can somehow improve professions are always welcome.

Damokles

I have to agree with @ferryman .
I myself will aim to be a gatherer/crafter first and a pve raider second.
Mini games would be interesting in gathering at the beginning, but they will make you angry after mining the 500th resource.

Caeryl

Damokles wrote: »

I have to agree with @ferryman .
I myself will aim to be a gatherer/crafter first and a pve raider second.
Mini games would be interesting in gathering at the beginning, but they will make you angry after mining the 500th resource.

No more than it’s frustrating running through a dps rotation for the 500th time.

A mini game doesn’t have to be some Bejewled knock-off immersion-breaker. Even something as simple as a rhythm game that just has you tap the gather key at a certain tempo for a particular ore would work just fine for separating a newbie from someone whose supposed to be a master gatherer.

I’d much rather have my material quality be determined by some aspect of skill than just hoping RNGesus smiles on me.

Child Item